


When I Touch the Water

by audreycritter



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfam Feels, Gen, Hanging Out, Old Injuries, bruce whump, enjoying getting to see family and not fight, father-son bonding, gen!family fic, headcanons galore, hot tub and not passing out, mission: get bruce to sleep, no profreading we die like mne, this is the fault of batfam angst war because i needed whump to recover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 09:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12078516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Bruce is trying to deal with an old injury alone, and alone is exactly the opposite of how Dick Grayson is willing to let him handle it.But Bruce can't really complain because it's nice to see his son again and not fight for once.(In which Bruce isn't a terrible dad and Dick is an excellent son.)





	When I Touch the Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jerseydevious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/gifts).



> Title from The Oh Hello's "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb"
> 
> Thanks to jerseydevious for letting me shamelessly plunder headcanons, and thank you to cerusee for being relentlessly encouraging when it's been difficult to write.

The heat seeped through tired, aching muscles and joints– not enough to relieve the pain that had flared up in his shoulder and back during the frigid patrol he’d cut short, but enough to dull the deep throbbing. Bruce was drifting off to sleep in the steamy corner of the indoor pool room, his head propped against the edge of the tiled hot tub, when a rush of chilly air swept out from an opening door and was followed a second later by a whistled tune.

He closed his eyes.

There was barely a splash when Dick Grayson slipped into the tub, then a rumble of a motor as he adjusted the jacuzzi jets.

“Glad I got here before you drowned yourself,” Dick said cheerfully.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Bruce grumbled in response, opening his eyes as far as narrow slits. Dick grinned at him from a few feet away, the surface of the water white with bubbling air foam.

“There are a lot of things you don’t plan,” Dick said, stretching out and sinking down into the water. Bruce was already up to his neck, in an effort to bury the offending shoulder in as much heat as possible. The unfortunate side effect of this was that the roiling water was now tickling his chin.

“Turn those off,” Bruce ordered irritably, unwilling to sit up all the way.

“Nope,” Dick said. “Not until you say thank you.”

“Do you mean please.” Bruce frowned at his oldest and wondered what he’d done to get such an ungrateful child. A moment later, he was struck by the thought that he hadn’t done much to deserve Dick Grayson, ever, and he shouldn’t complain even internally. He probably deserved far, far worse.

“Thank you,” Dick said. “For saving you. From passing out and drowning. Alfred asleep?”

“Yes,” Bruce said, closing his eyes again and resigning himself to the odd sensation on his face. He resisted the urge to scrub irritably at his cheek. “Why?”

“Oh, you know,” Dick said lightly. “Just that if he was awake and knew you were in here, he’d be sanitizing the pool ladder or something just to keep an eye on you. Nobody wants a repeat of 2012.”

“I was drugged in 2012. You know that,” Bruce said, sighing rather than trying to maintain any semblance of ire. He knew it was his shoulder and back making him restless and bitter and the last thing he needed was to slip into cruelty and accidentally wound Dick or lose his company or both.

“Just the once?” Dick laughed. “I seem to remember that was a particularly bad year for that sort of thing. Anyway, you know Al’s never really gotten over it.”

 _It scared the shit out of me_ , Bruce heard, underneath Dick’s buoyant tone.

“Thank you,” Bruce grumbled.

The jets turned off.

“What are you doing here, anyway.”

As soon as he said it, Bruce wanted to wrench his own shoulder right back out of the angry socket. It wasn’t what he meant, how it sounded, and it was exactly the sort of thing Dick might—

“Oh, you know,” Dick said, sounding entirely unbothered. God  _bless_  that child. He had enough grace to make up for ten of Bruce, when he wasn’t in his own foul temper. “Just grabbing some stuff from my room I realized I desperately needed, right away, at three in the morning.”

“Who called you,” Bruce asked.

“Tim,” Dick answered without hesitation. “Said you were ‘moving like a decrepit old man.’ And you can tell him I quoted him.”

“I will,” Bruce said, knowing he wouldn’t. Trying to make Tim squirm with something like that was sure to come back to bite him, possibly in the form of sleeping meds slipped into coffee with a ‘you mean what you’d do to me’ stony glare in response to being confronted about  _that_.

“Anyway, I was already in town, and I’m sick of cereal and want Alfred’s cooking for breakfast.”

“I’m glad to hear you have such selfless motiva–”

Here, Bruce shifted because one leg was starting to feel numb and it was a terrible mistake. As soon as he tried to move, he cut himself off and almost bit his tongue; the low groan that accompanied his clipped word and aborted motion had Dick springing to sit upright like an anxious rabbit.

“Hey,” he said, when Bruce had just  _stopped_.

Bruce spent a second internally cursing himself for letting Dick see him like this, for not chasing him away sooner, for not just holding damn still until the younger man decided to call it a night.

“Hn,” Bruce said, because Dick was probably going to go wake up Alfred or do something drastic if he didn’t manage some kind of reply.

It didn’t matter how often Dick had seen him immobilized with pain or bleeding or out of his mind with toxin. It never got any easier to be weak in front of him. It felt backward, like crying over a scraped knee in front of a first grader. The role reversal made him want to sink below the surface of the hot water, and also wish a little bit that the water was boiling motor oil or something.

He felt, rather than saw, Dick scoot closer. Bruce still hadn’t budged from his hunched position. He forced himself to at least open his tightly shut eyes, in hopes that he could convey some sort of sense of reassurance, but he found himself looking into Dick’s worried frown. It  _was_  worried, along with the crease in his brow, but not scared.

How did he keep forgetting that Dick wasn’t just a kid anymore? It was like a fact that slipped away from him, over and over; he was years more of a man now that he had been when he’d first stood in the cave and yelled at Bruce’s back, “Stop treating me like I’m just a  _kid_!” and it had been  _almost_  true then. Bruce just hadn’t wanted to admit it.

He relaxed, just incrementally, letting some of the defensive tension melt away from the physical pain buried beneath it.

“Tim wasn’t kidding,” Dick said quietly, his voice suddenly serious instead of chirpy. “Your shoulder?”

Bruce nodded and instead of trying to correct his posture, he just let himself sink a bit further into the water. He let his eyes close yet again and attempted, for not the first time that night, to will away the stiff ache.

The sound of a body being hauled out of the water, and the spray of drops, and then bare feet on the tiled floor all let him know that Dick had gotten up and walked off. Bruce listened, to the sound of a cabinet being unlatched and then the wet bar being rummaged in.

He had a sudden flash of memory, of crouching behind that same bar while skinny, gangly Dick leaned over it to watch him stock the mini fridge with CapriSun and root beer they’d smuggled past Alfred for a sleepover Dick was having with Wally. It had been easy to smile, then, at Dick whining at him for making sure all the labels faced the same direction and the boy’s laughter at Bruce stiffly informing him he’d be coming by to card them both later.

When Dick slipped back into the water, it was with a quick, “Don’t raise your arm, just open your mouth,” and then something small and cold being pressed against his tightly closed lips.

“Hmph,” Bruce said, which was as close as he could get to “what” without opening his mouth like he’d been instructed.

“Ibuprofen with codeine,” Dick answered firmly. “Take it.”

Bruce let Dick shove the pills onto the edge of his mouth and then swallowed them dry. He muttered darkly and took the water bottle Dick was holding out in his hand, the arm that didn’t drive nails in his back to lift. He drained a third of it with minimal movement of his neck and let Dick take it and set it on the floor outside the hot tub.

“What would you do without me?” Dick asked, a bit of his earlier cheer returning. He was maybe relieved Bruce hadn’t been as stubborn as he could have been about it.

“I don’t know,” Bruce answered honestly. “Probably drown.”

“I knew it,” Dick said, with a gleeful note of humored triumph. “Yell if this is making it worse.”

Before Bruce could ask what he meant, Dick had hopped back out of the tub and then perched behind him on the edge, one leg on either side of Bruce. The younger man leaned forward and his hands were on Bruce’s shoulders, digging lean fingers into the tender muscle.

“Dammit,” Bruce breathed, starting to pull away, and the fingers eased up almost immediately, with an “okay okay okay” from Dick and a hand keeping him from jerking away entirely. The prodding massage stopped and turned into just a palm pressed hard and flat against Bruce’s shoulder blade.

“Better?” Dick asked, a half second later.

Bruce almost snapped  _no_ , but then something about the pressure eased from aggravating to actually soothing and he slumped back. “Hn.”

“How long has it been bothering you again?” Dick asked, without letting up on his palm.

“Just tonight,” Bruce said, because it was the truth. He wasn’t sure Dick would believe him, but it was.

“So, do I get ready for a snowstorm?” Dick asked, gently teasing. “Are you basically just a barometer now?”

“Tuesday,” Bruce said flatly. He didn’t have the heart to  _not_  play along. His whole night was already so much better he had lost the energy or desire to pretend otherwise.

“Har har,” Dick said dryly, the beaming grin clear in his voice.

With the warmth from the tub, the counterpressure on his shoulder, and the simple fact of Dick’s nearness and that they weren’t fighting, Bruce felt himself drifting off again. He didn’t sigh, exactly, but he heard himself make a small noise like relief. It was quiet and warm and mercifully less painful.

Then abruptly, the palm against his shoulder was gone. Bruce grumbled in wordless protest, but instead of returning, a wrist pressed against his forehead at a sideways angle.

“Holy heatstroke, Batman,” Dick said, unrepentant. “C’mon. I let you sleep long enough.”

“Brat,” Bruce mumbled. “Five more minutes.”

“Nuh-uh,” Dick answered. “How long were you in there before I got here? You really are going to pass out from heat exhaustion or something. Get up. Or I’ll get a cup of pool water and dump it on your head.”

“You’re a terrible child,” Bruce said glumly, pushing himself up and sitting on the tub edge Dick had just vacated in his hunt for, hopefully, warm towels. He squeezed his already-closed eyes more tightly shut against the wave of dizziness that washed over him and reluctantly admitted to himself that Dick, maybe, had a point.

The thrown towel landed on the back of his head and he just barely kept it from tumbling over him into the water. He wrapped it around himself, strictly told himself not to shiver in front of Dick, and then promptly did so anyway.

“What did you do to that shoulder, anyway?” Dick asked, rubbing himself dry with another towel. “Before, during, or after my time?”

“‘After my time,’” Bruce echoed. “Don’t say shit that makes me feel old.”

“You know what I meant,” Dick retorted.

“I don’t remember,” Bruce lied.

He remembered. He remembered bleeding all over the interior of the Batmobile, forcing himself to stay conscious and not pass out while driving; the sensation like acid inside and the conviction that he could  _feel_  the bullet against the joint and everything around it a pain so intense it was almost like he didn’t know where his arm began or ended. Wide-eyed young Dick in his bright Robin suit sitting next to him, asking if he should maybe drive.

“Oh,” Dick said, sizing him up and throwing the towel into a hamper in the corner. “ _That_  time. With Penguin?”

Bruce didn’t even have to elaborate or confirm. It was unsettling, sometimes, how well Dick knew him and could read him.

“Probably others, too,” Bruce said.

“You’re lucky you even  _have_  a shoulder, still,” Dick said.

The air was too cold. All Bruce wanted was for the world to stop spinning and to slip back into the welcome heat of the water. He swayed a little and Dick’s hand was under his arm, tugging gently.

“I have on good authority there’s a whole stockpile of heated blankets in the den,” Dick said, pulling harder when Bruce resisted. “And I know where Tim’s backup stash of Reese Cups is.”

“You can’t bribe me,” Bruce said, climbing to his feet. He didn’t bother pushing Dick away when the younger man stuck close by. His legs were shakier than he’d expected and as much as he didn’t want to  _need_  to lean on Dick’s arm for a moment, he really, really didn’t want to see Alfred’s expression if he fell and cracked his skull open on the tile and needed sutures.

“Oh, but I know all your weaknesses,” Dick answered, while Bruce tied the belt of the offered robe around his waist. “I won the file in a game of poker against Alfred.”

“Nonsense,” Bruce said. “Nobody beats Alfred at poker.”

“Maybe I just stalked you,” Dick said with a shrug.

The air out of the hot tub was too cold. The air in the hallway was worse, and his shoulder flared up again in protest. Bruce gritted his teeth and didn’t allow himself a mournful backward glance at the hot tub.

He didn’t trust himself to speak again until they’d made it to the den and Dick, without asking, buried him in a couple of blankets. He stopped just short of actually tucking him in on the couch, which would have been insulting if Dick hadn’t vanished from the room just seconds later.

Bruce felt awake now, too awake, and he resented it until Dick returned with damp hair, in a change of clothes, with a bright orange package of candy in one hand.

“What are we doing,” Bruce asked, eyeing the candy suspiciously. “Are you sure Tim didn’t drug those.”

“Well,” Dick said, glancing at the plastic, “they’re unopened. And they’re his, for him to eat, so I’m going to say no. And  _we_  aren’t doing anything. You’re going to eat way too much chocolate while I curl up next to you on the couch and fall asleep because I’ve had a  _shit_  week and I’m tired. And if you don’t fall asleep in an hour from sugar crash and meds, you have permission to wake me up and make me start a movie.”

“Hm,” Bruce said, taking the Reese Cups. “Have you?”

“Have I…” Dick trailed off with a confused expression, while he did the opposite of giving Bruce space and instead climbed under the pile of blankets with him.

“Had a bad week.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dick said, yawning. “Not anything special, just regular shit.”

The weight of Dick’s head settled against his less injured shoulder, making it a bit harder than normal to open candy wrappers one-handed, but Bruce managed it anyway.

“You don’t have to wait,” Bruce said, the words tumbling awkwardly in his mouth around the overly sweet chocolate. “To come home, I mean. For something to be wrong, with me, for you to…”

“Don’t give yourself a coronary,” Dick mumbled sleepily. “I get it. If it makes you feel any better, I was headed over before Tim called.”

Bruce mulled over this and found that it did, actually, make him feel slightly less sad.

“Hm,” he said. “Good.”

Forty minutes in, he knew he was going to be awake by the end of the hour and resolved to not wake up Dick anyway. He didn’t need to be entertained with a movie, not when there was a gentle snore near his ear and the calming certainty that maybe,  _maybe_  he had the capacity to not screw everything up and could still be someone Dick felt safe with, after everything.

The end of the full hour rolled around and his head was against the back of the couch, his deep and even breathing matching Dick’s inhale for inhale, exhale for exhale. He wasn’t quite asleep, not yet, just on the verge of sinking into deep slumber; he watched the light around the edge of the curtain across the room change into a violet glow with sunrise.

When it turned golden, he was out.


End file.
